In recognition of these trends, Procter & Gamble founded Vocalpoint, a web community boasting a user base of over 500,000 "highly engaged" women, or what it calls "connectors".

Alongside gaining valuable insights from a key demographic, many of which are respected bloggers, P&G can ask members of this group to champion its brands among their own networks.

"Bloggers amplify the messages more quickly and to a broader audience. Just because you blog, doesn't mean you're an influencer. You have to develop a relationship of trust with your network," Laird said.

One recent campaign leveraging the Vocalpoint population in such a way was for Secret Clinical Strength deodorant, carrying the tagline "The more you move, the better you smell."

Having first forged the core idea through discussions with consumers, this effort was then rolled out to Vocalpoint, Twitter and Facebook, and encompassing more than 40 touchpoints in all.

"Offline, 100,000 Vocalpoint women opted-in to receive a mailer with a Secret Clinical Strength sample and coupons," said Laird.

All rights reserved including database rights. This electronic file is for the personal use of authorised users based at the subscribing company's office location. It may not be reproduced, posted on intranets, extranets or the internet, e-mailed, archived or shared electronically either within the purchaser's organisation or externally without express written permission from WARC.

Email this content

Send colleagues a link to this content.
To send to more than one recipient, put a comma between email addresss.